


blood harmony

by ptrprkrs



Category: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Pining, Unrequited Love, gina needs a hug, i have no impulse control
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24877168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ptrprkrs/pseuds/ptrprkrs
Summary: i wasn’t looking for youbut you found meyou found me
Relationships: Ashlyn Caswell & E.J. Caswell & Gina Porter, E.J. Caswell & Gina Porter, Ricky Bowen/Gina Porter, Ricky Bowen/Nini Salazar-Roberts
Comments: 7
Kudos: 31





	blood harmony

**Author's Note:**

> look at me once again proving i have self control whatsoever! this is not the fic i’ve been spending over two months on, but i said ‘partner in crime’ was a rina song and then i got to thinking...the ALBUM is a rina album. obviously, with this newfound knowledge, i had to write SOMETHING otherwise i am pretty sure i was going to lose my mind. yes, this is a song fic so PLEASE listen to ‘blood harmony’ by FINNEAS so you can see my vision.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _it’s been a couple days since i’ve slipped and said something sort of like your name_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when i say i got carried away....i mean it. im not sure when this stopped being an angsty rina fic and became a gina porter character study but im not complaining.

_**i lost a friend** _  
_**like keys in a sofa** _  
_**like a wallet in the backseat** _

The first time she ever pulled the Disappearing Gina Act, she was nine. She was lucky, she thinks, because even though she joined a new elementary school at the back end of the year, she didn’t have to start middle school without knowing anyone.

This isn’t to say Gina made any friends. Sure, the California city girl moving to old town Oklahoma was a story grubby fourth graders ate up, and everyone wanted to know if she surfed, if she said “rad”, or if the beach was really infested with sharks ( _yes_ ; _no, no one from this century speaks like that_ ; and _sharks can’t infest a place they live in_ ), it got boring pretty quickly. But it’s okay, Gina got used to having lunch with people who didn’t care if she starved to death.

* * *

The second time, eleven (also the longest time she’d ever spent in one place since her mom’s new job), Gina wasn’t so lucky. She’s plucked up from crack ass Oklahoma and thrust into bustling New York in the middle of the year.

Unfortunately for her, city kids weren’t all that interested in hearing about what life was like in the country. She got used to eating alone.

All this to say, that despite the fact that she never liked any of the towns she lived in, Gina hated moving. She’d always make a fuss, throw a fit, shed a few tears if she was really dreading it, not necessarily because she wanted to stay. But because permanence is something she’d only ever had a taste of, and she wants to develop a palate for it.

* * *

Her dad leaves when she’s twelve. Her mom doesn’t talk about it, but Gina has a feeling it was premeditated, if the way he just up and left with no warning or explanation was any indication. Gina doesn’t believe one could just wake up one day and decide to leave everything they had behind on a whim.

(But, it turns out, they were not everything he had. There was a family in Florida. He sent a postcard.) (Still, she doesn’t know how it was so _easy_ for him to just walk away from people he cared about when it was so hard for her to leave a shitty apartment she had absolutely no attachment to.) (She buries the thought that maybe she was just not enough to make him stay.)

* * *

Move number three, thirteen, isn’t as hard as the rest. She’s schooled her emotions, kept them in check, and stops her heart from behaving as though it was being ripped out of her chest when she starts packing her boxes.

Her mom worries about her. Says she’s not letting herself feel, that there’s nothing wrong with being sad. Gina says she has nothing to be sad about, that this move is just as unimportant as the rest. Her mom tells her she’s turning into her father. Gina doesn’t defend herself.

* * *

In eighth grade they have to do a project on heirlooms. _Find something that has been passed down through your family and present it to the class._

She considered not showing up. Letting the fact that she wasn’t there be the presentation. After all, absence is a trait her father so graciously gifted her.

(Her mom gives her a necklace she bought from a thrift store the week before and tells her to make up a story about how her grandmother was wearing it when she died. _We’re not sentimental people, Gina_ , she said. _We don’t hold on to important things we can lose._ )

* * *

Gina wouldn’t call herself a perfectionist. She just has a habit of doing things over and over again until she can do them with her eyes closed. Repetition is a necessity when your life has a habit of being snatched out of your grasp. She’s done it so much, she’s turned leaving into an art form.

* * *

East High wasn’t supposed to be anything special. She was supposed to get the lead. But things have a funny way of happening and the kids in the drama department become some of the most special people in her life, and Taylor turns out to be a pretty great character to play.

* * *

But Gina is not her father.

And leaving is hard, and she cries herself to sleep after her mom tells her they are moving again.

She leaves behind a part of herself here. With Ricky. She takes a part of him, too. Keeps it in her chest, behind her ribcage, just below her heart. It burns bright when his favourite movie comes on, and it dances along to the rhythm of her heartbeat when she sleeps.

(Gina likes to think he holds her close, too.)

* * *

Ricky leaves her twice.

The first time, she tries not to think too much about. It was a busy night, people were running around making sure they knew their lines and that their costumes were in order, so she doesn’t expect to have his full attention.

Except she does. She’s been gone for a week, and all she’s thought about the entire time was him, and she was counting the minutes on the plane ride here until she got to see him.

She was thinking he was too.

But Ricky is reserved, and walks away without looking back. She doesn’t know what changed.

The second didn’t come as a surprise. The moment he brought up Nini, Gina just knew. Nini was Ricky’s Florida. He walks away, right into her and doesn’t look back.

* * *

Gina is starting to think that maybe it wasn’t the act of leaving that other people found so easy. Maybe it was leaving _her._

_**i know i’ll be alright** _  
_**but i’m not tonight** _

Her mom flies out to SLC for Christmas. The Caswell’s are gracious people and open up their home for yet another Porter, and Gina thinks that this must be what family’s like.

Aunt Debbie and her mom cook (even though Ashlyn’s mom protested, but Amy Porter insisted), and Ash, EJ and her are in the attic looking for an extension cord long enough to reach the huge glowing Santa EJ’s dad put up on the roof.

“Are you even looking?” Ashlyn asks EJ irritably, after they’d been up there for almost twenty minutes. The dust was bothering her nose and she wanted to leave as soon as possible.

EJ groans from where he’s leaned over a box of wires. “Why don’t you ask, Porter, huh?”

Quick to defend herself, Gina points out, “I literally got here three days ago, I have no idea where anything is.”

“Which is why you should be _looking_.”

“Can’t we just tell EJ’s dad we can’t find one?”

“Christmas isn’t Christmas if that fat, old man isn’t glowing bright red from our roof, Gina.”

* * *

_“_ Jingle Bells _or_ Santa Claus Is Coming To Town _?”_

_Gina scoffs in disbelief. “It’s October.”_

_Shrugging, Ricky says, “It’s Christmas all year-round with you, Bobina.”_

* * *

Gina wasn’t planning on auditioning for Belle. Kourtney was deciding to do the show that semester, and if there was one thing Gina knew with every ounce in her body it’s that Kourtney had this in the bag.

“Doesn’t hurt to try, right?” Ashlyn points out shrugging, from the opposite end of the couch during their movie night. And, well, who is Gina to argue with that logic?

* * *

EJ says he’ll audition with her, and when they’re not messing up their lines from laughing so much, it dawns on Gina just how good of an actor he really is. She tells him so, and he gets a look in his eye like he might cry, but it’s gone faster than Gina can blink, so she thinks she imagined it.

She makes sure to compliment him more often anyway.

* * *

They all go out for celebratory pizza once the cast list is posted. To the surprise of no one, Kourtney and EJ got the leads. Ashlyn is playing Miss Potts and claims she’s being type cast. Gina was cast as Plumette, the feather duster.

She was also Kourtney’s understudy. Which isn’t inherently a bad thing. But Ricky is EJ’s understudy, so yes, it was a bad thing.

“I deserve an Oscar at the end of this for pretending to be straight,” Kourtney jokes, just as their waiter arrives to take their orders. Ashlyn’s eyes shine at this.

EJ talks to the waiter, Howie, way longer than necessary and Gina isn’t surprised when they start making more regular visits to the restaurant.

* * *

Everyone can see that Ricky and her were off. Miss Jenn brings it up during their read-through when Gina and him were delivering their lines stiffly, refusing to make eye contact.

At least on Gina’s part. Ricky kept watching her like a kicked puppy.

Their teacher forces them into an empty classroom to “sort out whatever was going on between them” and Gina wonders why they were trying so hard for her to keep her job.

Gina doesn’t speak to him. Sits at the back of class and traces the names carved into the desk. She feels Ricky watching her.

It’s uncomfortably quiet, until he decides to break it. “So what, we’re just not talking to each other anymore?” He rolls his eyes when she does not say anything. “You’ve been avoiding me since Christmas and I don’t know why. What happened?”

Gina’s head snaps up and she meets him with a heavy gaze. “You want to know what happened? You finally got the girl of your dreams and suddenly you didn’t want me around anymore. Like you had to make a choice and you didn’t choose me.”

Ricky’s face softens. “That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is. You walked away!”

“I wanted you to stop me!”

It’s quiet for a moment after that. He doesn’t get to pin this on her. He doesn’t get to act as though there was something she didn’t do. Gina holds his gaze, steady, eyes prickling with tears, chest heaving and says, “If you really wanted me stop you, you wouldn’t have left so easily.”

He doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t let him.

* * *

Her mom is wrong, Gina thinks, because maybe, if she held on just a little tighter, she wouldn’t have given Ricky room to leave her.

_**and i’ll be fine without him** _  
_**but all i do is write about him** _

Ashlyn is EJ’s favourite person in the world. Gina knows this, not because he told her or ever said so explicitly, but it’s not like he tries to hide it. It’s obvious.

He makes the two hour trip to this shop in the mountains to pick up her monthly horoscopes because Ashlyn claims it’s more reliable. _I trust the stars there better._ When he mentions a water polo game he’s got coming up, and Ashlyn asks if his parents are going already knowing the answer is no, his face lights up when she says she’ll be there.

Even though he’s adamant in his belief that astrology and auras are dumb, EJ still carries around a crystal Ashlyn gave him in his pocket anyways.

* * *

“I hate her so much sometimes.”

Despite them loving each other unconditionally, Ash and EJ fight a lot. Not so much that one would worry, but enough that Gina has stopped asking why.

She was reading by her window when EJ barged into her room after getting into an argument with his cousin.

Gina doesn’t look up from her book as she says, “You still love her, though.”

“Doesn’t dispute the fact that I want to wring her neck.”

“I want to wring Ricky’s neck, too,” Gina muses unconsciously.

EJ watches her intently, eyes boring into the side of her face. “But you still love him.”

* * *

She might hate him, actually, Gina thinks.

* * *

That’s not true. She doesn’t. She can’t.

* * *

It takes an hour for Ashlyn to join them in her room. She brings her laptop and blanket and lets EJ choose the movie by wordlessly giving him the device. They don’t say anything to each other, but when EJ falls asleep with his head on Ash’s shoulder, she knows they’re fine.

* * *

Gina has a permanent spot on the couch. She has two best friends. She has a mom who loves her enough to let her live across the country without her, because she knows it’s what she needs. She shares dish duty, sings karaoke on Fridays and has game nights on Sunday.

She was happy.

* * *

Ricky was her favourite person in the world.

* * *

Maybe EJ had a point.


End file.
